Products to be transported and/or stored often are packed within a box or other container. In many instances, however, the shape of the product does not match the shape of the container. Most containers utilized for transporting products have the general shape of a square or rectangular box and, of course, products can be any shape or size. To fit a product within a container and to safely transport and/or store the product without damage to the product, the void space within the container is typically filled with a packing or cushioning material. The packing material utilized to fill void space within a container is often a lightweight, air-filled material that may act as a pillow or cushion to protect the product within the container. In many circumstances, a plastic bubble material is utilized to protect and cushion the product contained within a container.
Small Styrofoam nuggets or “peanuts” may also be utilized to fill void space within containers for protecting and cushioning a product within a container during transport and/or storage. These nuggets or “peanuts” normally need to entirely fill the void space within the container to adequately protect the packaged product. In addition, it is also difficult to contain the Styrofoam nuggets or “peanuts” within the container, especially after the container has been opened.
Another typical material utilized for filling void space within containers, and for protecting and cushioning a product contained within the container, is paper and/or paper substrates. Typically, sheets of paper material can be crumpled so as to form long shapes having many folds or pleats. Lengths of crumpled paper can be created to easily and effectively fill void space within a container holding a product. Because the paper has fold spaces and/or pleats, the crumpled paper can be very effective at protecting and cushioning a product contained within the container, and may effectively prevent damage to the product during transport and/or storage.
Sheets of paper may be crumpled by hand, in that a person may take a length of a sheet of paper, and crumple the paper to form various shapes to fill void space within a container to protect and cushion a product contained therein. Hand crumpling paper takes much time, and is not effective and/or efficient to provide a large amount of crumpled paper as may be needed in a production line. Machines, therefore, are used to crumple paper.
Typical machines utilized to crumple paper generally take a length of a sheet of paper, and feed the paper into a crumpling zone of the machine to provide a crumpled paper product. Long sheets of paper substrate material are typically provided on rolls and are fed into machines at a high rate of speed. Certain issues must be overcome when using rolls to control the rate of speed for the paper substrate to be removed from the roll, which often is done with a braking mechanism to prevent the roll from unwinds at a higher rate of speed than the paper is being fed into the machine, which can cause paper to spill off the roll. This can occur when the rate of feeding of the paper into the crumpling machine slows, and momentum causes the roll, which is heavy with paper, to continue rolling. Using a roll also requires a cutting mechanism to cut the desired lengths of crumpled paper.
A need, therefore, exists for a dunnage apparatus that can allow improved operation feeding and/or crumpling mechanism made from relatively soft materials that may solve the problems associated with utilizing metal in the feeding and/or crumpling mechanisms.